Trump targets Iran’s infrastructure in bid to squeeze regime

Skip to content

The U.S. military is widening its attacks across Iran, striking a port facility, energy infrastructure and bridges as President Trump looks to squeeze the Iranian regime.

Iran has retaliated against nearby allies, targeting U.S. bases in the region, along with power and desalination plants, as tensions escalate, bringing both sides closer to an all-out war.

The intensified fighting comes as the memorandum of understanding (MOU) is in shambles and the two countries wrestle over the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a key energy shipping waterway, where traffic has plummeted over the last two weeks.

Ret. Vice Adm. John W. “Fozzie” Miller, who was the commander of the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, said it was important for the U.S. to change the “calculus” by striking bridges, railway infrastructure, command and control centers – anything that Tehran might use to supply weaponry – like missiles, drones, fast boats – to take military control of the strait.

“I think we should continue to expand that to include other ways all over the country where the regime has capability that allows them to exercise command and control and allows them to exercise power over people and so I think this is a positive development,” Miller said in an interview with The Hill.

The U.S. forces conducted airstrikes for the seventh consecutive night on Friday, striking bridges around Bandar Abbas, a port city on the Persian Gulf, which is the headquarters of the Iranian Navy and handles more than 85 percent of the country’s container traffic.

U.S. Central Command (Centcom) announced on Friday evening that U.S. forces concluded strikes around 9:30 p.m. EDT, and once again hit Iranian surveillance sites, military logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage and maritime capabilities.

Iranian state broadcaster IRIB reported attacks in and around the city Thursday and said that several bridges and highways connecting the hub to provinces were closed down.

Miller, the ex-commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, called Bandar Abbas “sort of the center of gravity for the Strait of Hormuz region, and for whoever wants to control that.”

Strikes landed in Bandar Khamir, a port city west of Bandar Abbas, in the Hormozgan province, hitting a major bridge that ignited a fire.

The U.S. military is also hitting ballistic missiles, launch systems, and also drone inventory and storage sites to curb Iran’s ability to retaliate against U.S. bases in the Gulf.

“Isolating the Strait of Hormuz was always part of the plan, so that’s why you see bridges being destroyed because we don’t want them to come in and be able to reinforce logistically and begin to recover the capabilities that we’re taking away from them,” Ret. 4-star Army Gen. Jack Keane said during his Friday appearance on Fox News.

Keane said Iran can still harass commercial ships attempting to transit the strait a “little bit,” but argued the U.S. can take down all of Iran’s means and its ability to control the waterway.

“It just takes some time to deal with this,” he said.

The U.S. military destroyed the Chahbahar Shahid Kalantari Port surveillance tower on Thursday, which U.S. officials said was part of a maritime surveillance network used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to surveil and target commercial vessels in the strait.

“It’s not just an inability to use it today because of the blockade; it’s the inability to use it for a long time to come,” Miller said of the tower in Chahbahar, Iran’s only oceanic port, which is situated on the coast of the Gulf of Oman.

Earlier this week, Iran’s retaliation consisted of firing missiles and one-way attack drones at U.S. positions in Kuwait and Bahrain. Kuwaiti authorities said on Friday that Iran struck a power and water desalination plant, causing damage in a country where around 90 percent of drinking water is from desalination.

The Kuwaiti military said it intercepted 32 drones early Thursday. The Jordanian Armed Forces said they intercepted three incoming Iranian missiles early Friday.

Qatar and Oman – two countries involved in mediating between Iran and the U.S. – also came under fire. Qatar’s defense ministry said its military intercepted an Iranian missile early Friday, but that a child was wounded by the shrapnel due to the interception.

Harrison Mann, a former executive officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Middle East/Africa Regional Center, said the definition of “insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result” and that is what is unfolding as President Trump continues to rely on strikes in hopes of shaking Iran’s control of the strait.

“By attacking Iranian infrastructure, including civilian targets which may constitute war crimes, Trump is certainly courting a return to full-scale war. But two developments might make him deescalate once again: Pleas from the Gulf states, which will bear the brunt of Iran’s retaliation–Iran has already attacked civilian infrastructure, including a desalination plant in Kuwait, a clear war crime — or an undeniable U.S. energy crisis as the SPR drains or if the Houthis close the Bab el Mandeb,” Mann told The Hill on Friday.

Iran might consider Kuwait’s desalination plant a fair target after Iran’s water storage facilities were struck last month, he said.

The U.S. military struck water facilities near the city of Kuhestak in Sirik county on June 10, damaging two concrete tanks and zapping water supplies for residents, the Iranian state broadcaster reported.

The activity risks of returning the region to full-fledged conflict, one that was tamped down by a fragile ceasefire and the MOU. But Miller, the retired read admiral, said he was not sure the U.S. “ever really factually exited a period of conflict” with Iran.

As the U.S. continues to launch strikes, the Trump administration is further bolstering its presence in the U.S. Central Command theater, which already counts well over 50,000 U.S. service members. U.S. fighter planes were flying from Europe to the Middle East Friday, according to flight-tracking data reviewed by The Hill.

Marines from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit are in the Centcom area of responsibility. The unit boarded a sanctioned oil tanker heading to an Iranian port Thursday as the U.S. continues to enforce the naval blockade, which was resumed on Tuesday.

The administration notified Israel that it is dispatching dozens of refueling aircraft to the country, Axios reported Friday.

The U.S. has around 30 military refueling jets at Ben Gurion International Airport.

Multiple Air Force C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft were flying from Germany to Israel and Jordan on Friday, according to flight-tracking data.

Mann, a former US Army major, said sending additional refueling aircraft suggests that some Gulf nations may have refused access, basing and overflight to Washington or “just that they are now assessed as too vulnerable” to Iranian attacks.

“Either way, the U.S. military using Israel as a base of operations will make deescalation harder,” he said. “Iran will strike Israel, giving [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu an excuse to resume his attempted war of annihilation against Iran.”

Commercial ships have continued to be harassed. The U.K. Maritime Trade Operations, which is linked to the British Royal Navy, said a vessel was attacked by an unknown projectile near the strait on Friday.

The crossings in the Strait of Hormuz hit a three-week low, according to ship tracker Kpler, with successful passages falling to eight on Thursday. Seven of the eight used the route near the coast of Iran.

Trump said Thursday night during his address to the nation that the U.S. is “winning” big in Iran and that the American public will see the “fruits of that labor very, very shortly.”

Vali Nasr, a Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, said Iran is “calculating” that the president will try to break Iran’s “back,” but once the pressure increases on the global economy, the U.S. will have to return to the negotiating table to strike another MOU.

“I think we have to remember for the United States this is not everything, but for Iran this is an existential fight and so they are willing to suffer more and accept more hardship because the alternative is basically complete collapse,” Nasr, an expert on U.S.-Middle East relations, said during his Friday appearance on CNN.

“If they give in now, then basically they may as well surrender, and I don’t think they’re ready to surrender. And if they’re not ready to surrender, they have no choice but fighting,” he said. “That’s the way they are thinking about this.”

Tags

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.